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[Doug Willhite <drwillhite@earthlink.net>]

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Bee Catastrophe: 1/3 of Colonies Died This Winter, Worries Grow About  
Terminal Decline
The honeybee is responsible for pollinating 90 commercial crops  
worldwide. What do we do if they're gone?
May 3, 2010

The Observer UK / By Alison Benjamin

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has  
emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row,  
more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.
The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in  
2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to  
the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then  
more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees  
worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is  
causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last  
winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of  
America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to  
crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon  
honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to  
the global economy.

Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking  
varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor  
nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance  
of so many colonies has also been dubbed "Mary Celeste syndrome" due  
to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives.

US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees,  
wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a  
key problem. "We believe that some subtle interactions between  
nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to  
kill colonies," said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS's bee research  
laboratory.

A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for  
Animal Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single  
cause, but pointed the finger at the "irresponsible use" of  
pesticides that may damage bee health and make them more susceptible  
to diseases. Bernard Vallat, the OIE's director-general, warned:  
"Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would  
represent a terrible biological disaster."

Dave Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiaries, the Pennsylvania-based  
commercial beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD, said that  
last year had been the worst yet for bee losses, with 62% of his  
2,600 hives dying between May 2009 and April 2010. "It's getting  
worse," he said. "The AIA survey doesn't give you the full picture  
because it is only measuring losses through the winter. In the summer  
the bees are exposed to lots of pesticides. Farmers mix them together  
and no one has any idea what the effects might be."

Pettis agreed that losses in some commercial operations are running  
at 50% or greater. "Continued losses of this magnitude are not  
economically sustainable for commercial beekeepers," he said, adding  
that a solution may be years away. "Look at Aids, they have billions  
in research dollars and a causative agent and still no cure. Research  
takes time and beehives are complex organisms."

In the UK it is still too early to judge how Britain's estimated  
250,000 honeybee colonies have fared during the long winter. Tim  
Lovett,  president of the British Beekeepers' Association, said:  
"Anecdotally, it is hugely variable. There are reports of some  
beekeepers losing almost a third of their hives and others losing  
none." Results from a survey of the association's 15,000 members are  
expected this month.

John Chapple, chairman of the London Beekeepers' Association, put  
losses among his 150 members at between a fifth and a quarter. Eight  
of his 36 hives across the capital did not survive. "There are still  
a lot of mysterious disappearances," he said. "We are no nearer to  
knowing what is causing them."

Bee farmers in Scotland have reported losses on the American scale  
for the past three years. Andrew Scarlett, a Perthshire-based bee  
farmer and honey packer, lost 80% of his 1,200 hives this winter. But  
he attributed the massive decline to a virulent bacterial infection  
that quickly spread because of a lack of bee inspectors, coupled with  
sustained poor weather that prevented honeybees from building up  
sufficient pollen and nectar stores.

The government's National Bee Unit has always denied the existence of  
CCD in Britain, despite honeybee losses of 20% during the winter of  
2008-09 and close to a third the previous year. It attributes the  
demise to the varroa mite – which is found in almost every UK hive –  
and rainy summers that stop bees foraging for food.

In a hard-hitting report last year, the National Audit Office  
suggested that amateur beekeepers who failed to spot diseases in bees  
were a threat to honeybees' survival and called for the National Bee  
Unit to carry out more inspections and train more beekeepers. Last  
summer MPs on the influential cross-party public accounts committee  
called on the government to fund more research into what it called  
the "alarming" decline of honeybees.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has  
contributed £2.5m towards a £10m fund for research on pollinators.  
The public accounts committee has called for a significant proportion  
of this funding to be "ring-fenced" for honeybees. Decisions on which  
research projects to back are expected this month.

WHY BEES MATTER
Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective  
is the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As  
well as most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges,  
strawberries, onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers  
and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which  
is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on  
honeybee pollination to increase yields.

In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has  
been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food  
and produce honey, nature's natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their  
extinction would mean not only a colorless, meatless diet of cereals  
and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards,  
allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food  
chain that sustains wild birds and animals.

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